The highly anticipated premiere of The Challenge: All-Stars finally dropped on Paramount+ on Thursday. This is something I’ve been wanting after seeing how the current season airing on MTV is being dominated by Big Brother players that think they are the shit (looking at you, Fessy).
Host TJ Lavin welcomes back the OGs for a special season, which will be played as individuals. Only one person will walk away at the end of the season with $500,000 and the bragging rights as the best in show history.
TJ sets them on their first challenge: Deep Blue Dive, which sees the players placed on random teams where they must solve math equations and swim to get a block with the correct answer, which just so happened to be chained underwater. Laterrian and KellyAnne are captains of the Copper Team, and Jisela and Teck are leaders for the Silver Team.
This first challenge was hilariously bad for both sides but hey, they’ve been out of the game for the last decade so I cut them some slack. Laterrian really struggles in the water and almost drowns (“I look like a f—in’ punk,” he says in his confessional). In the end, the Silver Team wins the challenge.
TJ announces it will be a men’s elimination and Teck (male captain of the winning team) is the only male safe. However, as the female captain of the winning team, Jisela gets a power called Life Saver. This means she has the power to save someone from elimination. As punishment for losing the challenge, Laterrian is automatically put up for elimination.
Nominations
I’ve missed these old-style nominations instead of this team BS we’ve got going on in the current season. Syrus kicks things off by announcing that Laterrian wants to go against Ace since that’s the person he has the least amount of history with.
Not wanting to rock the boat, everyone nominates Ace to go against Laterrian in the first elimination of the season. Considering these guys have not competed in 18 years, this is going to be fun.
The Elimination
TJ welcomes the OGs to The Arena, which is so badass and nostalgic at the same time. Jisela has the Life Saver power but declines to use it when she recalls watching Ace talk about her on a previous season, calling her “dead weight”.
This first elimination is a classic wrestle and that makes Laterrian smile. He knows how physical this is about to get. The first round sees Laterrian pick up Ace and slams him to the ground on his back, getting the pole and taking the first heat.
The second round sees Ace fight harder but Laterrian is still too much. He picks Ace up and slams him on the ground over and over and over…well, you get the picture. Ace loses and an emotional Laterrian wins the first challenge of the season.
If this first episode is anything to go by, we’re in for a badass two months.
The Challenge: All-Stars streams Thursdays on Paramount+
